Corrections under pressure: how decisions of the Constitutional Court on rally legislation are implemented

Permitted places

On November 1, 2019, the Constitutional Court of Russia considered the regional law of the Komi Republic, prohibiting all public events within a radius of 50 meters from the buildings of republican and municipal authorities, as well as on Stefanovskaya Square in the center of Syktyvkar, to be inconsistent with the Constitution. Other regions were ordered to exclude similar provisions from their legislation.

A complaint against the regional law on rallies was filed by Syktyvkar activists Vera Tereshonkova and Marina Sedova. In July 2017, the mayor's office refused to allow Tereshonkova to hold a public service in memory of the victims of the Great Terror in the USSR of 1937–38 on Stefanovskaya Square. Officials referred to the federal law on rallies and the decision of the Komi State Council, which determined the places where public events are prohibited. Sedova failed to coordinate a meeting dedicated to problems in the work of local transport on the site in front of the city hall.

On June 4, 2020, following a lawsuit from the Samara region, the Constitutional Court adopted a resolution lifting regional bans on meetings, rallies, processions and demonstrations near military and religious facilities, educational institutions and hospitals. In both decisions, the Constitutional Court criticized the very principle of abstract prohibitions on shares in objects of any type.

Activists of the local branch of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation filed a complaint against the Samara law. Regional deputy from the party Mikhail Matveev previously described in detail to OVD-Info numerous and rather absurd bans on street protests in the Samara region. According to him, alcohol and cigarettes could be sold at a distance of 100 meters from Samara schools, and rallies could be held no closer than 150 meters. It was prohibited to hold political actions near buildings where foreign language courses were held. They refused to approve the procession on the grounds that it was 150 meters from the route - behind the railway tracks! - there is a hospital. Another procession was not approved, because also 150 meters from its route there is a circus, where the performance was supposed to begin two hours after the stated time of the procession.

All regions of Russia must bring their legislation into compliance with the new decisions of the Constitutional Court within six months after their adoption. The heads of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation were given two months to submit relevant bills to regional parliaments. The prosecutor's office is obliged to control the process, but in reality this is done by human rights activists.

Magic kicks

At the end of 2019, after the decision of the Constitutional Court on the Syktyvkar case, “Apology of Protest” appealed to the regional parliaments and prosecutors’ offices of more than 40 regions of Russia. Human rights activists demanded that the ban on protests near government buildings be lifted. On December 3, 2019, at that time, the chairman of Yabloko, Emilia Slabunova, addressed the prosecutors of 43 regions of Russia with a demand to monitor changes in local laws on rallies. Some regional branches of Yabloko have appealed to their governors and legislative assemblies. OVD-Info, together with the Memorial Human Rights Center and the Public Verdict Foundation, filed applications with the Prosecutor General’s Office demanding that the bans on protests at specific addresses be corrected, as well as the abstract territorial bans be lifted in general. The information was also sent to Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova.

Yabloko received responses to appeals from 27 regions: five responses came from legislative assemblies, one from the regional government and 23 from prosecutors' offices. According to the party's assessment, four responses - from the Voronezh, Tula, Kaluga and Arkhangelsk regions - can be called unsubscribes. The answers boiled down to the fact that supposedly “the legislation does not restrict the holding of rallies in any way.”

Six regions reported that they had adopted the necessary amendments to the law (Kemerovo, Magadan, Saratov, Pskov, Ryazan and Astrakhan regions); ten, at the time of the response, were developing a law or considering it in legislative assemblies; in nine, the prosecutor’s office recognized the discrepancy with federal legislation and sent a request to change the law to regional authorities.

“Regions take cues from each other. None of them are interested in people being able to freely hold rallies and pickets. For them to correct the legislation after the decision of the Constitutional Court, they need a magic kick in the form of such appeals, a reaction from the opposition,” says Ivan Bolshakov, head of the analytical department at Yabloko.

According to Bolshakov, the regions that are quite difficult in terms of freedom of assembly are the south of Russia: the Voronezh and Rostov regions, the Krasnodar Territory.

According to OVD-Info, by June 2020, restrictions were lifted in 37 of the 47 regions affected by the decision of the Constitutional Court. According to Yabloko, today almost all regions from which responses to requests were received have adopted amendments to their law. The exception was three subjects - Voronezh region, Tula region and Khanty-Mansiysk administrative district.

Legal surprise

The regional authorities were reminded of the Samara decision of the Constitutional Court by OVD-Info and the Human Rights Center "Memorial", which initiated appeals from the Presidential Human Rights Council (HRC) and the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation, Tatyana Moskalkova. At the time of publication of the text, the Ombudsman’s Office did not provide comments. Appeals from the HRC were initiated by council member Natalya Evdokimova.

According to OVD-Info calculations, the Samara decision of the Constitutional Court must be implemented by December 5, changing legislation in 60 regions. has done this So far, not everyone .

The HRC’s appeal went to the regions with the signatures of 23 council members out of 49. The signatures were collected in an electronic mailing list - Evdokimova suggests that some of the council members may not have noticed the call, and others did not want to get involved in a non-core topic.

“For almost all the subjects [of the federation], the appeal was a complete surprise, which makes me think that the decision of the Constitutional Court is not a matter of prime necessity for them: they are not being followed. In the Kaliningrad region they demanded an outgoing registration number [of HRC appeals]. Clerks from some regions called the HRC to make sure that there is such an Evdokimova, and she has this phone with this number and this mail - you never know, enemies of the people are pestering them,” said Natalia.

According to her assessment, of the 34 regions that responded to the HRC, only two or three prepared changes to the legislation themselves, before the letter from human rights activists.

Evdokimova notes that the regions reacted very differently: “For St. Petersburg and Moscow, such letters do not matter, and some sent as many as three answers: they received [the appeal], it is being worked on, the draft law has been prepared. Some settled on “being worked on.” The Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug first sent a reply, I called the Human Rights Commissioner of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, and they immediately sent a good answer. A young lawyer from one of the Volga regions called me: “Natalia Leonidovna, we have restrictions because they told us: we definitely need at least some restrictions.” Who asked, he did not give it away. They can’t hold rallies on the territory of train stations—probably, God bless him. It’s probably really dangerous to hold a rally on the platforms.”

We have to change

Deputy of the Novgorod Regional Duma from the A Just Russia party, Alexander Kashitsyn, noted in a conversation with OVD-Info the low level of political activity in the region. Part of the problem is that young people leave the Novgorod region immediately after school. According to Kashitsyn, their protests are “cut down in the bud”; at most, there are single pickets. This explained the deputy's slowness in adjusting regional legislation.

“Other regions look up to the Sverdlovsk region; regional legislation is quickly adjusted in relation to the federal one,” says Mikhail Zubarevich, a deputy of the local legislative assembly from the LDPR. According to Zubarevich, the decisions of the Constitutional Court “reflect today’s demands of society” on the issue of freedom of assembly.

Deputy of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg from Yabloko Boris Vishnevsky notes that after the Syktyvkar resolution the legislation was changed, which means it will be changed after the Samara one.

Alexander Furik, a deputy of the Astrakhan Region Duma from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, told OVD-Info that regional legislation was changed, but with resistance from United Russia, which tried to minimize the amendments.

Emilia Slabunova, today a deputy of the Karelian Legislative Assembly from Yabloko, told OVD-Info that in the republic it is impossible to hold actions only on the roadway near educational and medical institutions - ambulances arrive there, relatives bring the sick, or parents take their children to classes. It is also prohibited to rally on sidewalks and roadsides directly adjacent to these buildings. On the opposite side of the road - it’s already possible.

“The decisions of the Constitutional Court will be implemented, but reluctantly, because they still have to. They will think about how to protect themselves. Governors who are smarter know how to moderate protest activity without harming themselves. So that, on the one hand, there is no massacre, and on the other, there is no feeling that people in their region are rioting every other day, and the management system is falling apart. They form working groups, consult with everyone, publish something on Instagram: they create a feeling of a busy social life.

The regions are not interested [in] changing their legislation, but they are obliged. They will try to fulfill it at the very least. Protest activity is increasing, and regional authorities know this better than anyone else. They are more afraid of the federal ones: they will be to blame if something happens. They will try to do it in such a way that protesters will not come to their windows,” says political analyst Ekaterina Shulman.

The text was prepared with the participation of the data department of OVD-Info